Heck, even in WoW PvP (in Arenas and Rated Battlegrounds), this is true. It’s very clear and predictable which PvP tier you were in (or at least was back when I played during MoP).
In OW, I’ve played between Bronze and Plat. Some of the hardest games I have played were against hardstuck Bronze - players with 50-100 games in Bronze/Silver and they were basically Plat+ level players.
I’ve solo queued so many accounts to GM on support, you just need to understand you’re not a healbot, you need to dmg amp the right targets, pre heal or be ready to heal the target the enemy is diving, need to apply pressure in-between healing, position smartly so you’re difficult to kill, you need quick reaction times.
Those who think support is about having good healing numbers will never climb.
I’m tired of having to pray for a good team in hopes of actually climbing. Tired of having to hear others blaming me for their continuous mistakes, tired of having different levels of gameplay in the same rank. Tired of having the worst hero picks out of the whole roster. Only 4 are dependable. It’s disgusting how fake the ranks is, it feels like a sticker now. It has lost its meaning with how loose the matchmaking is. So many bad DPS/Tanks with huge egos. Disgusting.
That’s all well and fine, and I understand very well how narrow the value of a few base statistics is and one shouldn’t jump to conclusions over them. But if you consistently have twice the heals of anyone else, best kills of any support, least deaths, and generally speaking are constantly doing life-saving plays and still drop from plat to silver after some 30 completely one-sided stomps, and then on silver see people of extremely high skill you didn’t even spot on plat…
Well.
You can spin that any which way you like, but that’s not an indicator of a working matchmaker. On so many accounts I’m not even gonna list them.
I’ve also never seen a ranked system that yoyo’d people 3-4 ranks all over the place all the time. Ever. For Overwatch that’s literally the norm.
As I said before, I do believe that with hitscan heroes where you can actually carry, and in the case of extreme percentages (super low skill, or super high skill) the system would work better. But it’s plenty obvious that high bronze to high plat is as rng as things can get.
That’s basic stuff but it won’t help if your consistently matched with teams that can’t get kills despite doing what you describe.
PS. If you’re smurfing/opening a new account, then it will likely be much easier to climb because the matchmaker has a “low confidence” in your MMR.
It’s not impossible. You need to contribute more than just healing. I don’t care about the whole “it’s not Healers it’s Support” debate because it’s moronic semantics, but you aren’t just a healer.
I climbed from Gold 1 to Diamond 4 since the first season in Support mainly playing Bap and swapping to Moria if I get dived a lot. Genji especially is much easier to deal with as Moira.
As Bap you should be focusing on breaking shields if everyone is topped up, and maximising your APM by shooting then healing as you lose nothing by doing that (unless an enemy isn’t in range). As well as picking off low health enemies and jumping onto high ground. That’s just one example.
You should be good with at least 2 or 3 Supports so you can swap if it’s not working. I even swapped to Brig for a game or two when I was being majorly harassed by a Sombra.
The issue is this can vary from game to game now. One match there’s a widow who one shots me the second I dare to peek, the next the dps don’t have a clue on either side and I’d be better off ignoring them and doing the job myself. You end up spending half the match trying to figure out what actual rank you’re playing at. It’s exhausting.
Yeah it takes one or two fights to figure out how the game will go. Really sucks when it sinks in that its a loss because of disparity.
quite literally the definition of skill issue, supports have the highest impact in the game overall and is one of the easiest roles to pick up out of the three, even if you say that “my team is holding me back” trust me, out of the 10 games that your reinhardt is charging in and feeding 90 of those games that you lose are 100% your fault, ive recently started grinding support, i placed gold 1 and shot up from gold 1 to diamond 2, i, a GM dps main, who has never touched support in his life, took only 20-30 games to reach almost masters on an account with the start of gold MMR, and guess what? im gonna reach masters eventually, it was piss easy, my play time on support is legit at max 12 hours.
Here’s a cookie for our GM champion 
thank you for cookie
If I played on your account, I would easily be able to rank up. It’s not impossible to rank up as a support, you just need to be better than the average bronze player.
It’s absolutely not impossible to climb as support. While it’s true that the support role is more reliant on the rest of the team than the other two, it still has more than enough impact to influence the outcome of the game in a major way.
That’s true.
As a support main who has 3 different accounts, my latest acc i was doing my placements in masters.
I discussed with my team every match to get an idea of what ranks everyone was.
I assume its because the 50 QP games i needed to win to play comp, the mmr assumed i was masters.
I went 5-2 on placements, playing some of the highest quality games of my life.
Placed gold4.
The game will never auto place you in masters because it wants you to play more and climb your way out from lower down.
I got out of gold very quickly, breezed through plat until the game started giving me silver and gold players in my plat ranked games.
Now as a support you should be dying last in the fight and having good assists, saves etc
And good KD is also beneficial.
The minute you start getting higher ranked enemies with lower ranked team mates is when the game is trying to clamp down on your speedy climb.
Ive watched a handful of unranked-GM videos to see the quality of matches/team mates they recieve on the climb and it always seems less like what i experience.
Which means only a small handful of games are team mates soft throwing with bad plays.
Compared to my experience which is a lot more games of soft throwing.
Its these games that define your climbing experience.
You would need to clutch more heals, land more shots, kill more instead of just heal.
And its that consistency that will help “carry” you out.
SAme, & it just seems to be getting worse. I uninstalled until they fix it.
All i do is solo queue support. I enjoy it.
It isn’t at all. I hardly try on support mostly dps zen bap or Moira and I’m gm1 just get good idk
Unfortunately true, but still crazy unfair as supports have far more responsibility than any other role, and they have to overperform far more than their teammates do in order to rank up.
Supports have to be aware of what the other 9 players are doing at all times. They need to know every dps hero’s favorite flanking path, hideout spot and ult setup on every map. They need to track everyone’s ults, cooldowns and spot low health targets in order to not miss a lifesave, or miss a chance to help a teammate score a clutch elim, or not themselves get killed. And supports have to cover every mistake by their dps and tanks while the other roles simply do not have to worry about that.
All dps need to do is be accurate.
Its not. But K/D does matter when looking to rank up. If you cant Kill well— not dying is paramount. If your team dies-- gtfo and meet them back at spawn. Dont die there.
What really helped me was deathmatch as support.
Many supports ults or abilities become useless in DM… or at least dont help with damage— so you will at a severe disadvantage… and probably hate gettin smashed at first…
BUT— if you can focus on 1 thing— its just survive. When literally everyone is against you and targeting you.
Dont hide All the time-- thats cheating yourself.
Engage in fights when you can but learn to gtfo when its clearly gonna be a losing battle.
Dont focus on your kills AT ALL when first starting. Only focus on not dying.
AND THEN— as you get better and better at surviving-- youll start finding yourself with more oppurtuies to start 3rd partying and stealing kills. You dont get those oppurtunities if your dead. So focus on that first and build from there.
AND-- while Your doing this— you will absolutely be forced to maximize your cooldown management. Which is CRUCIAL for a support hero to win a fight. every tool you have matters and needs to be utilized correctly to win a lop sided fight— and by staying alive— you give yourself the oppurtunity to learn and build on these skills.
Understanding position is paramount as well. Learn to use the maps "L"s. (A positioning concept) Theres a youtube vid exppaining this concept which helped me greatly. It was a while ago- but ill see if i can find it and post it here… give some time on that tho.
My routine on days i play is now
Sign on and jump in a headshot aim trainer for 15 to 20 min to get “dialed in”
Then i play 2 or 3 DM games to get into “survive mode” and further dial in my aim and killing.
Then i go play regular games.
If you grasp these ideas and do things regularly— i promise you will start climbing. FAST.